March 11, 2016

"Trump will change how you view human beings in general. His complete disregard for facts is irrelevant to the outcome of the race because he knows humans don’t use facts to make decisions. They use emotion. Only one candidate in the race understands how reality works, and he’s teaching us as he goes. All I’m doing is documenting it."

But what about the policy details and the fact that Trump can’t name the leaders of important countries? What about his budget numbers that seem almost random? What about his businesses that failed or look sketchy to you?

Trump is selling his instincts, judgment, belief in core American values and common sense applied to situations as they confront him. Not his encyclopedic knowledge.

Voters have gotten the latter before, and what do they have to show for it? Even evangelical voters are willing to look past the details of Trump's "New York social values" in favor of his save the country from DC values message.

I'm neither surprised nor frightened that voters are willing to give that a try.

So people are gullible (on the facts) emotional (in their decision-making) and while Scott Adams disavows Trump policies (if Adams is able to divine the nature of any Trump policies), he's okay with going along for the ride.

What an utterly depressing commentary on current affairs.

Thank you very little, all you non-Republicans, for coming out to our primaries. Just don't blame Republicans going forward.

Donald Trump is selling the same way that Roy Cohn, Trump's mentor, had Joe McCarthy declaring varying numbers of Communists in the State Department. But selling only succeeds if you have a product. At some point, facts will demand their due.

In the list of Trump accomplishments (or failures) where should we put his intervention in Central Park to make the skating rink work? Seems to me that was exemplary: city and unions couldn't get the job done, he came in and did it.

Not saying he's always right; just curious if this case has been given any attention. Presumably he delegated like mad, but does that lessen the achievement? In the White House he would have to delegate almost everything.

Google "Wollman Rink" or go directly to the Wiki entry, it discusses the TRUMP intervention in fall 1986. I did all caps for TRUMP because he's so egotistical: put his name all over the project and apparently still has his fingers in its operation.

If he takes the election will we become the United States of Trumperica?

Here's the truth for our sadly emotional Chuck: Trump has received 35% of the vote to date in the Republican primaries and cauci. Period. Your assertion of "and generally significantly less" it completely false. How could you be that stupid and/or ignorant of the facts? Give it a rest, you fucking loser.

"So, are we to believe that voting with one's id is now a good idea? Dismiss rational thought, it's no longer important in the brave new Trump World."

Its hard to discern when rational thought was ever a significant factor in democratic politics. We like to imagine we are rational. But, on these rather indirect decisions, if we are its only accidentally. We can be extremely rational if we are troubleshooting a technical problem, but not on this stuff.

Was this "capitulation" in the debate borne out of inevitability of a Trump nomination or inevitability of a brokered convention? If Rubio drops out after Florida and Kasich drops out after a possible loss in Ohio, who gets the delegates?

ddh: "Donald Trump is selling the same way that Roy Cohn, Trump's mentor, had Joe McCarthy declaring varying numbers of Communists in the State Department. But selling only succeeds if you have a product. At some point, facts will demand their due."

There were several hundred soviet spies in the Roosevelt administration and onward which were exposed when, for a brief period, the Russian authorities allowed investigators to spend some time with the Venona intercepts.

This is a very, very "inconvenient truth" to those on the left. Many of whom, if you can believe it (and why wouldn't you?) still proclaim Ethel and Julius Rosenberg and Alger Hiss "innocent".

Well, to be fair to the lefties, the left applies the "innocent" tag to anyone who spent time in active service to a regime that murdered 10's of millions of it's citizens and worked to undermine the United States.

Next up, "What Soviet Union?!!" And just in time too as we pretend that Bernie left his heart, not in San Francisco, but in Moscow and Havana and Managua.

What I don't understand about Trump's chance for the nomination is how the voting works if there is no majority candidate on the first ballot. Can Rubio "give" his delegates to Cruz in order to defeat Trump, or do all delegates become total free agents after the first ballot? And if they do become free agents, won't a lot of Trump's delegates abandon him?

johns: "Can Rubio "give" his delegates to Cruz in order to defeat Trump, or do all delegates become total free agents after the first ballot? And if they do become free agents, won't a lot of Trump's delegates abandon him?"

Unless there has been a change, after the first ballot, the candidate can choose to endorse or not endorse but the delegates are free to move about willy nilly.

@ johns: Yes, most states' delegates are bound by their respective state election laws -- not an RNC rule, but state law -- to vote for the candidate to whom they are officially pledged on the first ballot, but not thereafter.

A few states have some additional bells and whistles for later ballots, but by far the majority of delegates will be released after the first ballot.

And because the delegates are typically GOP party regulars, very few of the delegates pledged to vote for Trump will actually have any personal loyalty to him.

So yes, if Trump doesn't have it locked up with a majority of the delegates, or so close thereto as to make it a "tip-in" (e.g., within 20-40 delegates), then his prospects get extremely grim extremely quickly. If he is the plurality leader by a wide margin going in, but is denied the nomination as coalitions form to give someone else a majority, then Trump's supporters may cry "Foul!" and storm out to a rump convention for a third-party candidacy. The second-place candidate is the obvious target for anti-Trump forces to coalesce around. If a contested convention resulted in the third- or lower-placing candidate, or any non-candidate, being selected, though, all hell would indeed break loose.

Since I don't believe Donald Trump's pledges -- none of them -- I fully expect him to go third-party no matter what if he's not the GOP nominee.

"Yes, most states' delegates are bound . . . to vote for the candidate to whom they are officially pledged on the first ballot, but not thereafter."

But, the Republicans have an eight state rule. This probably limits the nominated candidates on the first ballot to Cruz and DilDon. How this works on subsequent ballots if there is no majority on the first ballot is not clear to me.

"And because the delegates are typically GOP party regulars, very few of the delegates pledged to vote for Trump will actually have any personal loyalty to him."

The process of actually selecting the delegates is somewhat opaque, at least to me. It appears to depend on the states' rules. Some delegates may have already been chosen, others may be selected at state conventions. It has been reported in the last couple days that the DilDon campaign is working to maximize the number of loyalists among the delegates in order to prevent defections if the process goes to the second ballot.

"Since I don't believe Donald Trump's pledges -- none of them -- I fully expect him to go third-party no matter what if he's not the GOP nominee."

I agree that the DilDon is completely unworthy of trust, but mounting a third-party challenge at that late date would be enfraughtened with fraughty frautness. Besides, the thing that DildDon hates more than anything else is spending money on something other than mail-order Russian brides and he's not going to fork out the $100 million or so that a serious third-party candidacy would require.

I think Adams is right here. I've spent quite a bit of time on the neuroscience of selling and analysis of facts won't do it. Trump uses a number of negotiation and selling techniques. I think he's the car salesman you say you can't stand but there you are in a new BMW with every option and you paid full price. And then, you talk yourself into liking the salesman to help rationalize the purchase. As for Ben Carson saying there are two Trumps - there is only one Trump. But he's savy enough to know his audience and adjust. When he's selling to voters, he's brash, labeling, loose on facts, high on both positiveness and anger, and funny. And that's because he understand the choice factors of most voters (btw, the group here at Althouse aren't the voters he's selling to - he doesn't care about our vote because he's already qualified us as not open to the sale right now). I'm sure that for someone like Carson, Trump focuses on different choice factors. And Carson bought the shiny new BMW from a sales guy who called him a child molester. Imagine if Ted Cruz had a 1/10th of Trump's likability?

Beldar, and others, thank you for the clarification about convention delegate rules. If Trump goes 3rd party, he would not have much of a chance. i wonder if he really wants to become just the most recent third party candidate to lose.

To add my to point above, Scott Adams is trying to sell to us. He's trying to make an argument that might appeal to engaged voters like us to choose Trump. It's a low cost, low risk way for Trump to pick a few of us off as voters.

Early in our marriage, my wife arrived home one afternoon with a very expensive, very large Persian carpet rolled up, tied atop our car. She and I dragged it into the living room, where it was two feet longer than the room. She called the store demanding they take it back at full price. The salesman said to her, "But you loved that carpet! It will be your nicest carpet the rest of your life! What you have to think about is, HOW LONG ARE YOU GOING TO KEEP THAT HOUSE?"

The carpet still looks great in our current living room, in a different house, almost 25 years later.

Drago, the Rosenbergs and Alger Hiss [could his last name be more appropriate?] were Soviet spies and traitors, but Joe McCarthy wasn't the cure. In fact, McCarthy's reckless charges allowed the left to pooh-pooh the real threat after he was shown to be a fraud.

Years ago, snake-oil salesmen sold laetrile as a cure for cancer, a real disease. Now, an apricot-faced huckster is selling himself as the solution for the country's ills. But, like laetrile, he's just the pits.

@ CachorroQuente (3/11/16, 1:32 PM), who said, "[T]he Republicans have an eight state rule. This probably limits the nominated candidates on the first ballot to Cruz and DilDon. How this works on subsequent ballots if there is no majority on the first ballot is not clear to me."

"Each candidate for nomination for President of the United States and Vice President of the United States shall demonstrate the support of a majority of the delegates from each of eight (8) or more states, severally, prior to the presentation of the name of that candidate for nomination."

Trump & Cruz are both extremely likely to meet this qualification; the last count I saw had Trump at 6 and Cruz at 4 of the required 8. Neither Kasich nor Rubio have any realistic shot, though, and certainly no new white knight like Mitt Romney or Paul Ryan could satisfy this rule. HOWEVER: This rule was itself a temporary add-on intended to keep Ron Paulbots from disrupting Mitt's coronation in 2012, and it could be changed very easily by the RNC before the convention, with no one having any legal recourse to complain about the rule change.

It's this possibility -- that someone will jigger the rules at the last minute -- that upsets both the Cruz and Trump campaigns, especially the latter.

If the "establishment" rallies around Cruz, though, they can keep the rules exactly as they are and still stop Trump, fair and square, within those rules. They will thereby deny Trump and his supporters a legitimate reason to go third-party. But I believe Trump and his supporters don't give the first flying flip about "legitimacy," and if it's anyone but him, Trump will break his word to support the GOP nominee.

The process by which state delegates are selected varies very substantially from state to state. Sometimes in the past -- as in the 1976 GOP convention -- the nomination fight plays out not in a series of floor votes, but rather in challenges to particular states' delegations (or subgroups within them). Sometimes those get fought out in the pertinent state's own courts before the convention; sometimes they get fought out behind closed doors at the conventions. That could happen in this cycle, but I think it's less likely simply because the disinfectant of sunshine is so much more potent with a 24/7/365 news cycle and the internet.

@ CachorroQuente (3/11/16, 1:32 PM): If the RNC powers-that-are-unseen decided to throw in behind John Kasich, for example -- as in his persistent fantasy -- then they could amend Rule 40(b) to simply add a clause at the end of the key sentence, thusly:

"Each candidate for nomination for President of the United States and Vice President of the United States shall demonstrate the support of a majority of the delegates from each of eight (8) or more states, severally, prior to the presentation of the name of that candidate for nomination; provided, however, that if no candidate shall secure the nomination on the first ballot, then the nominations process shall be re-opened and the eight-state requirement hereinabove shall no longer apply."

Fig leaf: "Oh, we didn't change the rules, we just added a clarification for what should happen if there were multiple ballots. How can anyone object to clarity?" But that would obviously be humbug.

Yes, I understand that whoever it is in charge of the rules can change the rules -- surely, the temporary ones. My uncertainty lies with continuance of the rules as they currently are. For example, in between the first and second ballot if state delegations commit a majority of their delegations to someone who didn't meet the eight-state rule on the first ballot, can the candidate[s] meet the eight-state rule on subsequent ballots?

"[I]n between the first and second ballot if state delegations commit a majority of their delegations to someone who didn't meet the eight-state rule on the first ballot, can the candidate[s] meet the eight-state rule on subsequent ballots?"

I don't think the rule as presently written directly answers that. Because of its purpose, it seems quite likely that no one ever gave any consideration to whether and how the rule should operate in a contested convention with multiple ballots.

One could argue about what is implied, from the circumstances and the language, and ask for a ruling from the chair (Speaker Paul Ryan, I believe?). Or one could try to amend the rule.

I think the most reasonable interpretation would be that no one may become a candidate in second or later ballots who failed to meet the eight-state requirement before the first ballot. But I could certainly argue the opposite case with a straight face, too.

Speculations (as opposed to specula) are lots of fun, but at this point not worth a bunch. Next Tuesday is what's important. If DilDon wins in Florida and Ohio, it will all be over except learning how to say "Madame President." The Republican convention will have about as much relevance as an Occupy Wall Street demonstration. But, maybe Hillary will stroke out or something and the Dems will be left with Bernie -- the only man in the world who can get DilDon elected president -- and visa versa, as Yogi might say.

If Trump goes into the convention with say 1,000 votes and more than anyone else. And he doesn't get the nomination, then everyone might as well as go home. Because Hillary will have been guaranteed the election.

Republicans need to understand reality. We've lost 4 of the last 6 elections. We lost the popular vote in 2000 and only won because a couple thousand leftist in Florida decided to vote for Ralph Nadar. And John Kerry was on of the worst POTUS nominees ever and he still almost won.

Bottom line: If the Trump voters go 3rd Party or just stay home. Hillary will win. We cant' afford games at the convention.